Penn State Quiz Bowl is pleased to announce the inaugural Keystone State Invitational (KSI), taking place on March 30th and 31st, 2019. We hope that this event will provide an opportunity for teams in the two halves of the state to play one another, in a way that has been long discussed but never put into action before, as well as help prepare Pennsylvania teams planning to compete at SSNCT, HSNCT or NSC.

Logistics

KSI will consist of two back-to-back tournaments. The first tournament will be a mirror of the D2 SCT set, run using the NAQT ruleset and 10 minute timed halves. The second tournament will use the Florida Spring Tournament (FST) question set, run using the PACE ruleset ignoring bouncebacks (20 point powers, no negs). The NAQT tournament is expected to conclude by 4 pm Saturday. The PACE event will begin shortly afterwards, resume on Sunday and finish by 1 pm, giving teams plenty of time to travel home. Registered teams will receive more details about logistics leading up to the tournament.

Teams are guaranteed a minimum of 11 rounds for the NAQT tournament and 10 rounds for the PACE tournament.

Please note: if you have attended a tournament at Penn State in the past, the building is NOT the same as it was before. The opening meeting will take place in Osmond Lab, and the tournament will take place in Boucke building. Annotated maps and clear directions will be provided for teams after registration.

Field

The field cap for both events will be set to 16 teams. We expect to re-evaluate this number in January, after the staffing situation becomes more clear. A waitlist will be formed for teams that register after the field has been filled.

Until January 1st, the field will not be accepting registrations from teams outside of Pennsylvania and Delaware. At that point, we will open the field up to out-of-state teams that wish to attend. The reasons for this are twofold: we want to prioritize Pennsylvania teams in the field, and there will likely be other mirrors of D2 SCT set up by then that out-of-state teams should be attending.

Fees

NAQT tournament

$100 for first registered team
$90 for all subsequent teams
-$10 per buzzer (can be claimed a maximum of 3 times by a school)
-$10 per staffer (can be claimed a maximum of 3 times by a school)
-$20 if team is competing in both events
Minimum fee of $50

PACE tournament

$120 for first registered team
$110 for all subsequent teams
-$10 per buzzer (can be claimed a maximum of 3 times by a school)
-$10 per staffer (can be claimed a maximum of 3 times by a school)
-$20 if team is competing in both events
Minimum fee of $70

Penn State Spring Academic Bowl (March 16th) will be a separate tournament from KSI, both hosted by Penn State. I just hadn't posted an announcement for Penn State Spring yet on the forums, but did set up the registration system with NAQT. The GPQB regional calendar is up to date and has the relevant details.

Congratulations! PACE (the Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence) has designated your tournament, Keystone State Invitational, as a platinum NSC qualifier. This means that the top 25% of teams in your tournament (rounded up to the nearest integer) will qualify for our national high school quizbowl championship, the PACE NSC on the weekend of June 8-9 at the Hyatt Regency Reston outside of Washington, D.C.

The field for the NAQT tournament is nearly full. Any teams that register past the 16th will be placed on a waitlist until we can expand the field (I can't guarantee that we will be able to do so). Also, if there is anybody nearby interested in staffing, please let me know.

Full stats for the NAQT tournament have been posted. Congratulations to Ithaca for winning the championship! The stats file linked above list all teams in order of finish - the playoff tracker linked above may also be helpful in determining how the playoffs worked. We apologize that we ran an hour behind what was communicated to teams, but we're still happy that we were able to complete fourteen rounds of play by 5 pm.

The PACE tournament is currently on lunch break. Prelim stats have been uploaded at this link.

The PACE tournament concluded with a thrilling final that came down to the last tossup. Congratulations to Ithaca for winning both halves of the tournament! The combined stats are posted here. Final order of finish:

1. Ithaca
2. Rope Meadows
3. Allderdice A
4. State College B
5. Great Valley
6. Allderdice B
7. State College A
8. State College C
9. Penn Manor
10. Downingtown East

A private forum has been created for FST, so please request access by clicking User Control Panel (under your username in the top right corner) => Usergroups => 2019 Florida Spring discussion. I hope you enjoyed the set! We would appreciate your feedback.